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About this project

In this existential animated short, Museum curator Gordon Boonewell's world is falling apart. And his mind may be following.

From a production test for Giant Sloth

THANK YOU/ OUR NEW GOALS!

THANK YOU TO ALL GIANT SLOTH BACKERS!!!We Reached our goal in just 8 days! So we're going to keep going in the spirit of the initial goal: to make truly independent work and make it as weird and smart as we want.

OUR NEW GOAL IS $50,000! But what will we do with that?

The end of GIANT SLOTH leaves a lot of cliffhangers and questions unanswered. It begs for Gordon's world to be explored further. So we're going further! With your help we're going to make a SECOND SHORT FILM!!! (titled BENCHLEY MORNINGS) that will be even stranger than GIANT SLOTH! If Gordon is losing his mind in GIANT SLOTH, then get ready for BENCHLEY MORNINGS!

Additionally if we reach this new goal, BOTH films will have international subtitles, and we'll be able to afford to get this submitted to around three times the festivals (those submission fees add up fast)!

THERE ARE PLENTY OF NEW REWARDS ALONG THE WAY:

$27,500: POSTCARDS FROM THE BENCHLEY All backers at $40 or more will automatically receive a postcard set adorned with exhibits from The Benchley Museum of Cultural and Natural History

$30,000: THE MUSEUM CATALOG EBOOK: All backers at $15 or more will receive a copy of "The Benchley Permanent Collection" eBook, edited by Gordon Boonewell, detailing the history of some of the bizarre antiquities housed in The Benchley Museum.

$32,500: ANIMATED BLOOPER REEL: All backers at $15 or more will receive the animated blooper reel, featuring outtakes, probably plenty of cursing, and general improvisational goodness you've come to expect from the amazing people on this amazing cast!

$37,500: "DESTROY THE PAST" ANIMATED "TED" TALK: All backers at $15 or more will get another mini animation starring terrible boss Roman Nichols (voiced by Robert Popper) as he gives a defense for destroying the old Benchley museum. He's awful. We love him.

$40,000: THE GIANT SLOTH FIGURINE: (SEE UPDATE #11) This will be a super limited edition figurine that we'll only be making if we reach $40,000. And it will be only go out to backers at $100 or more.

$50,000: BENCHLEY MORNINGS! An entire other short? Yes! We dive deeper into the Benchley Museum, its dusty world, and the quickly disintegrating life of Gordon Boonewell!

ORIGINS

Darker, stranger, and more introspective than most studios would ever allow, GIANT SLOTH is exactly the kind of animation I've been wanting to make for the last couple years.

When
a creator pitches a project to Hollywood studio executives, the notes
for projects like this always come back the same: make it broader.
Bigger. Louder. Less "smart" (really... that's a note you get A LOT). The
studio's hope is that those compromises equate to more
potential viewers. But it's not what I want to watch. Or spend my time making.

A
studio has to have big, loud, broad appeal to cover their massive overhead.
But a small creative team with a dedicated group of supporters... we can make
whatever we want. And make it truly great.

With that in mind, I wrote GIANT SLOTH. And the talent that has signed on to work on this project has been nothing short of amazing. Every person in the cast and crew of this film is a creative force unto themselves. To have them all working together? (Insert emoji of mind being blown.)

Uncompromised by the studio process, GIANT SLOTH
combines the psychologically rich world of literary graphic novels with
the all the possibilities of motion and sound that animation allows. It
treats its characters not as clowns shuffling for an easy laugh, but as
people.

And as giant sloths. Giant sloths are people too.

The titular Giant Sloth, a dusty relic of things as they were in Gordon's life.

THE STORY

GIANT SLOTH is a surrealist tale drawing as much on influences like Fellini and (the main character's namesake) Luis Buñuel as it does animation from the 1960s and 70s. Sprinkle those worlds with my love for underground museums and fictitious histories, and you've arrived at GIANT SLOTH.

The museum
where Gordon Boonewell works - The Benchley Museum of Cultural and Natural History
- has fallen on hard times. Attendance is down and they've been in the
red for ages. So it's no surprise when the museum privatizes...
no surprise to anyone other than Gordon.

But Gordon is a curator of the past, a man set in his ways. Ways that are being systematically erased, dumping him into a world he's willfully ignored. Unable to cope with the upheaval alone, Gordon begins to suffer hallucinations. Or at least he hopes they're hallucinations...

Character designs for Giant Sloth

His only friend at the museum quits and his new boss is a Brit with a holier-than-thou attitude and nothing but disdain for Gordon's dusty world. Gordon is miserable. But at least he has his wife.

Until he gets home and discovers that his wife is leaving him.

That's when Gordon starts hearing voices.

Gordon is having conversations with things that can't possibly exist, and bungling interactions in real life. From fantasizing about a new manager as a giantess to imagining killing his boss with an iPad, to (maybe really?) being involved in some crimes and questionable sex acts, Gordon is having a harder and harder time keeping fantasy separated from reality.

But maybe, in the end, that's not such a bad thing.

Exhibits from The Benchley Museum of Cultural and Natural History.

MY BACKGROUND/OTHER ANIMATION

My books (published by Fantagraphics and Random House)

After years concentrating solely on comics (self-publishing my first comics in 1999 and moving on to being published by Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, and Marvel, among others), I began branching out into developing projects for television and film. I've done a handful of animated projects, including the title sequence for Comedy Bang! Bang! (below), but GIANT SLOTH will be the first longer-form animated project that I will write and direct from start to finish.

I've been developing, planning, and casting this project for over a year, and with your help I can cross the finish line and bring this weird world to squirming, uncomfortable reality.

Some past animations to assure you this project isn't crazy talk:

Comedy Bang! Bang! opening credits:

A sampling of my animated monologues, Forlorn TV:

A production test (Ava and Joe)

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Artist and author Paul Hornschemeier is the author of the graphic novels Mother, Come Home, The Three Paradoxes, and the New York Times Bestselling Life with Mr. Dangerous. His books have received international awards and been published in eight languages. His art and writing have appeared in publications ranging from Life Magazine to The Wall Street Journal and he has produced work for clients including CNN, FX, and This American Life.

Scott Aukerman was a writer for the cult classic series Mr. Show before beginning his Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast and his IFC show of the same name (now in its third season). In addition to various writing and acting endeavors, Scott also helms the Earwolf podcasting network and is the director of the viral hit Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.

Golden Globe-winning, Emmy-winning, Academy Award-nominated actor Paul Giamatti has appeared in American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, Win Win, 12 Years a Slave, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and starred in HBO's miniseries John Adams (which won more Emmys than any other miniseries in TV history). He has also voiced multiple cartoons and acts as producer for various projects through his production company Touchy Feely.

Jason Mantzoukas is the foul-mouthed Rafi on FX's The League, as well as Sacha Baron Cohen's right hand man in The Dictator. Jason is one of the hosts of the "How Did This Get Made" movie podcast, the best dissection of terrible film-making you'll ever hear.

Co-creator of the award-winning BBC series Look Around You, Robert is a British comedy producer, writer, actor, and author with many of the best shows of the past decade in his credits. To name a few, he has worked on Peep Show, The Inbetweeners, The IT Crowd, South Park, and Friday Night Dinner. In his spare time, he started a religion.

The man of a million characters, Brian Stack is instantly recognizable for his many appearances on Conan (and Late Night with Conan O'Brien).By the time you've picked a favorite, he's performed as yet another character... and blown your mind with its perfection.

Jeff Zwirek, Adam Zwirek, and Jay Gish - the artists that are Bindledog - have been animating for over a decade and are responsible for breathing life into cartoons as diverse as alternate histories for the NFL and the frenetic opening sequence of IFC's Comedy Bang! Bang!

Ever wonder who makes the sounds when a Transformer... transforms? Look no further than PK Hooker. PK's has worked on sound editing and design for Superman Returns, Argo, all the Transformers films, and many more over the past ten years. He's also one of the fellows that gave new purpose to the GI Joe PSAs. Yes, those PSAs.

A founding member of the seminal Chicago band The Coctails, Mark is now the musical guru behind countless film, commercial, and video game scores, under his company The Mayfair Workshop. That's enough cred for a normal mortal, but Mark is also Studio Manager for a band called Wilco.

WHY KICKSTARTER?

Short-ish answer: because I want to make this thing exactly the way it should be made, not the way an executive wants.

Nuts and bolts answer: The money raised through this Kickstarter campaign will go directly toward the cost of making this film,
including software, hardware, sound recording equipment, and studio
rentals. Your money will go right to work financing the supplies and time needed to make this film a reality.

GET CLOTHED! Choose one of your 100% non-pants shirts. Or get them both! Occasionally do some laundry and you're set FOR LIFE.

BE AN EXHIBIT! You can be part of an exhibit in the Benchley Museum and appear in the film! Maybe you're a Visigoth? Maybe you're a hungry settler wrestling an abnormally sized field mouse?

Get tutorials (like the one above, but with live footage, behind the scenes, and more) showing you how to put together your own film or TV show! See how we recorded, colored, animated, mixed, and delivered the entire film to you!

Gordon from pencil art to final colors

One of our many stretch goals, this figurine will only be produced if we get enough pledges!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Will there be subtitles for the film?

I will absolutely be putting the option of English subtitles on the DVD/BluRay so it can be enjoyed by the deaf and hearing impaired community. This will also be available for the download option, but that may be a separate file from the non-subtitled file. (I'm looking into formatting options for that.)

Regarding foreign subtitles: I'm currently looking into translations/subtitles for other languages as well, but as that will require bringing on board people to do translations, and wasn't budgeted into the original goal, that will probably need to be a stretch goal.

For the $1000 “YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES” reward, will I be speaking, or is it just my likeness?

If you want to do the voice too (there's no pressure to do that if you'd rather not), we could work that into a scene. There will be a lot of opportunities for that throughout the film. To keep expectations realistic: it would only be a line or two, but as they say, there are no small parts... and obviously you would be credited in the film for your part, no matter how few lines you have.

Risks and challenges

Recording in various cities and working with/around everyone's busy schedules, there are sure to be bumps along the road of making this film. While this is a small crew compared to the number of people working on a studio project, it still takes time away from people's other projects, their families, and their (all too rare) free time.

But with modern technology being what it is, it's amazingly easy to do things remotely, to create and direct pieces of animation and sound while not in the same city (or country) as your collaborator. And fortunately, with years of experience on projects of all sizes in independent media, everyone on the team is used to making things happen for less, with less time.

I'm confident that this creative team can rise to any challenge and make an amazing film the way we want it to be made.

Pledge $15 or more

Pledge $20 or more

DOWNLOAD, EBOOK, AND ACCESS. A password protected digital download of GIANT SLOTH, an exclusive eBook with production art and the script, and access to backers-only updates.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $25 or more

52 backers

DOWNLOAD, CREDITS, EBOOK, AND ACCESS A download of GIANT SLOTH, the eBook access to backers-only updates, and your name on screen in the Thank Yous of the film!

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $30 or more

26 backers

DANIEL AND DOWNLOADS. A download of GIANT SLOTH, the eBook, access to updates, a thanks in the credits, PLUS a download of Paul's live action short film DANIEL IN THE FACTORY (only available through this campaign!)

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $35 or more

27 backers

DOWNLOADS AND FEATURETTE. Downloads of GIANT SLOTH and DANIEL IN THE FACTORY, the eBook, access to updates, plus a thanks in the credits. PLUS a featurette on how the series was put together from concept to final animation.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $40 or more

27 backers

DISC, DOWNLOADS, AND FEATURETTE. A signed DVD/Blu Ray of the film, plus digital downloads of GIANT SLOTH and DANIEL IN THE FACTORY, the eBook, a thanks in the credits of GIANT SLOTH, and the featurette on how the series was put together from concept to final animation.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $50 or more

93 backers

THE LIMITED EDITION BOOK! Get the signed DVD/Blu Ray and downloads of GIANT SLOTH and DANIEL IN THE FACTORY, a thanks in the credits PLUS a signed limited edition hardbound book, designed and illustrated by Paul, featuring scripts, production art, interviews with the creators, and more!

Pledge $150 or more

SNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE: Everything from the $50 level, PLUS have PK Hooker reprise his role as Snow Job from the GI Joe PSAs and record your voicemail message!

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $200 or more

2 backers
Limited (8 left of 10)

SHOP TALK: Everything from the $50 level PLUS a skype conversation with Paul about your comics, animation, or tv project. Or your feelings. (30 minutes, group hug not included)

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $300 or more

4 backers
Limited (16 left of 20)

YOU LOOK MARVELOUS, DARLING: Everything from the $50 level PLUS your portrait drawn in the style of the film.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $400 or more

3 backers
Limited (17 left of 20)

BANG! BANG! Everything from the $100 level PLUS a piece of original art from the Comedy Bang! Bang! title sequence.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $500 or more

0 backers
Limited (15 left of 15)

ORIGINAL ART: Everything from the $100 level PLUS an original piece (featuring at least one character... we're not sending you a lamp) used in the film.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $600 or more

0 backers
Limited (10 left of 10)

YOU'RE ON DISPLAY: Everything from the $300 level PLUS your likeness will appear in one of the exhibits in the museum. Perhaps you're a wounded soldier? Maybe you're a weathered explorer? And you get the original art of your likeness!

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $750 or more

0 backers
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Everything from the $500 level, PLUS a TWO part skype session with Paul about your comic, animation, or tv project. Bring two projects, do a series of notes/revisions. Anything you want!

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $1,000 or more

8 backers
Limited (2 left of 10)

YOU OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES: Everything from the $300 level PLUS you will be a character in the actual film. You can be a museum janitor, a stoned party-goer, a creepy bus driver... Let's talk! And of course you get to keep the original art!

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $1,500 or more

0 backers
Limited (5 left of 5)

PICK OF THE FLAT FILES Everything from the $500 level PLUS a collection of otherwise out-of-print prints from Paul, plus all of his books signed PLUS an original piece of art from one of those books.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $2,000 or more

1 backer
Limited (4 left of 5)

LET'S DO LUNCH: Everything from the $1000 level PLUS lunch or dinner with the director in either Boston, New York, or Los Angeles (travel/lodging not included)

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $3,000 or more

1 backer
Limited (4 left of 5)

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Everything from the $500 level PLUS you will be credited as an Executive Producer in the credits of the film and on IMDB.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Pledge $5,000 or more

0 backers
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CO-PRODUCER: Everything from the $500 level PLUS you will be credited as a CO-PRODUCER in the credits of the film and on IMDB.

Estimated delivery:Oct 2014

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Funding period

May 28, 2014 - Jun 27, 2014
(30 days)

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